Once Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570, there was a target on all Catholics, especially priests. The Catholic gentry of England put everything on the line to give shelter to the priests, particularly by the construction of hiding places in their large country houses. Here is the story of my trip to some of these surviving “priest holes.”
The staircase hide at Harvington Hall
Fourteen martyrs to be exact. The idea began with a commission to write the script for an audio drama series on the English martyr Nicholas Owen. Having researched Owen and written the script, I was interested to learn more about him. Those who are unfamiliar with this little Catholic saint can learn more about him here and here.
Owen was born in Oxford in 1562 just two years before William Shakespeare. His family were recusants. Two of his brothers went to Europe to train as priests, while Nicholas—a man of short stature, perhaps even a dwarf—was a master carpenter. Nicholas met Father Henry Garnet, head of the Jesuits, in England and traveled as his servant, designing and building the ingenious hiding places for priests called priest holes.
It was a terrifying time to be a Catholic in England. Once Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570, thereby releasing her Catholic subjects of the duty of obedience, there was a target on all Catholics, especially priests. The celebration of Mass was a capital offense, as was the crime of sheltering a priest. Nevertheless, the priests returned from their training on the continent ready to risk their lives. The Catholic gentry also put everything on the line to persevere in the ancient faith and give shelter to the priests.
A crucial part of their plan to protect their priests was the construction of hiding places in their large country houses. The pursuivants (priest-hunting agents of the Queen), once tipped off by spies in the house, would raid the premises, measuring rooms to find false partitions, pull up floorboards and panelling, ransack the rooms looking for vestments, missals and sacred vessels, and bribe and threaten members of the household. To counter the threat Nicholas created ever-more ingenious hiding places. After the Gunpowder Plot, he and Father Garnet were captured. Owen died under torture in the Tower of London and Garnet was hung, drawn, and quartered in St Paul’s churchyard, London.
Our Morgan sports car
After writing the script for the audio drama, I decided to head back to England and visit St Nicholas Owen’s priest holes. My companion was my older brother—a keen enthusiast for British sports cars. I tempted him to join me after I discovered a firm near Bristol that rented Morgan sports cars. The plan was to tour Britain in the little car, enjoy a vacation, and turn it into a mini pilgrimage honoring St Nicholas Owen, martyr.
In the end, we honored not only St Nicholas Owen, but also thirteen other martyrs of the Tudor Terror. The first entailed a drive to beautiful Cornwall to venerate the relics of St Cuthbert Mayne in Launceston. Mayne was a convert from Anglicanism and the first priest to be martyred under the newly oppressive regime. He was imprisoned at Launceston Castle and executed in the town square in 1577.
From Launceston we made our way to the Dorset village of Chideock that boasts a shrine and small museum to the eight Chideock martyrs. Blessed Thomas Pilchard was hidden at Chideock Castle, captured, and executed in nearby Dorchester in 1587. Blessed John Cornelius served as chaplain to Lady Arundell at Chideock castle. Betrayed by a servant, he was arrested along with three laymen who sheltered him: Thomas Bosgrave, a nephew of Lady Arundell, and two of his servants: John Carey and Patrick Salmon. All four were hanged, drawn, and quartered on July 4, 1594. A local carpenter, Blessed Thomas Pike, who was converted by Father Pilchard, was arrested defending him and died in prison after many months of torture. John Jessop, a gentleman, was also arrested with Father Pilchard and died in prison. The eighth martyr is Blessed Hugh Green, a convert priest executed in 1642.
The next day took us to Yeovil in Somerset and then to Glastonbury where we encountered the story of three more heroes. Richard Whiting was the last abbot of Glastonbury. King Henry VIII, through Cromwell’s machinations, seized the abbey—the second largest and wealthiest monastery in England after Westminster. Whiting hid the abbey’s treasures from the King’s henchmen—thus being accused of stealing from the King. In other words, stealing possessions of the King that the king had just stolen from him!
Whiting was hauled to the top of Glastonbury Tor—a prominent hill outside the town along with two of his monks John Thorne and Roger James where all three were hung, drawn and quartered. They are commemorated in the shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury—located in the Catholic Church opposite the Abbey ruins where we prayed before traveling to the midlands to visit the priest holes of Nicholas Owen.
Many of Owen’s surviving constructions are in the Midlands—the area of Worcester and Birmingham—also the locale of Stratford-on-Avon. The strength of recusancy in this part of England lends weight to the theories that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic.
In the Northwest corner of the Birmingham area, Moseley Old Hall houses a priest hole that is probably not one of Owen’s, but has the distinction of not only sheltering priests, but also being a hiding place of King Charles II on the run after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester. Toward the Southeast corner of Birmingham, Baddesley Clinton is a moated manor house with a remarkable hide built by Owens. In October 1591 Father Garnet along with seven other Jesuits concealed themselves in the hide Owen devised in an old sewer beneath the house. Father John Gerard survived the persecutions and recorded his memory of the raid in his book, The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest. Coughton Court is a short distance from Baddesley Clinton, where one hide can be seen built in a tower off a secret attic chapel.
Harvington Hall
The most astounding house in the area is Harvington Hall. Experts believe Nicholas Owen most certainly worked at Harvington due to the ingenuity of the hiding places. Priests hid in holes under the floor, in secret spaces behind a wall beam that swings up, up a false chimney into the attic, behind stair treads that lift up, and above a bread oven—accessed from a trapdoor in the floor of the room above.
The first three houses in the Birmingham area are owned and operated by the National Trust and are open to the public, while Harvington is owned by the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The final house in our tour was in a private home: Broad Oaks Manor, known in Owen’s time as Braddocks. There another hide can be found that is definitely Owen’s work because Father Gerard hid there for three days and records it in his book.
The trip ended with a visit to Nicholas Owen’s hometown of Oxford. He lived with his family in Castle Street, then the heart of the medieval city. While staying at Blackfriars, I walked over to Castle Street—now dominated by a modern chrome, glass and steel shopping center. A pint of beer in the Tudor-looking Castle pub evoked Owen’s world a little, and a later visit to the University Church took me to see the memorial on the North wall that commemorates all the martyrs from Oxford who gave their lives during that tumultuous and terrible time.
It was very moving to see there, alongside the names of Latimer and Ridley, Archbishop Laud, and Edmund Campion is the name of the little carpenter and builder from Oxford: Saint Nicholas Owen.
Readers can listen to the free five-part audio drama on the life of Nicholas Owen by going here and scrolling down.
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Images courtesy of the author.